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Prof. Carter Snead recently spoke to an assembly of federal and state judges about the current and future impact of neuroscience and neuroimaging on civil and criminal court cases. He presented alongside prominent neuroscientists who spoke about how their work might have implications for the law.

“There is no one such thing as a Catholic voter,” said Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and theology at Notre Dame, who attended the event in South Bend and is a member of Obama’s national steering committee of Catholic advisers.

Catholics, who account for about 18 percent of the population of Indiana and a quarter of the national electorate, are much more diverse in the United States than they are often portrayed, Kaveny said. The challenge for Obama, she said, is to make Catholics more familiar with his message of economic empowerment, equality, and ending the Iraq war.

Notre Dame Law School and the St. Joseph County Courts are co-sponsoring a domestic relations mediation training program for area attorneys and law students this week and next on campus. Notre Dame Associate Clinical Professor of Law Michael Jenuwine serves as one of the program’s lead trainers…

Robert F. Biolchini, a member of the University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees and partner in the Tulsa, Okla., law firm Stuart, Biolchini & Turner, and his wife, Frances, have made a $15 million gift to the University to help underwrite the renovation of the current Notre Dame Law School building. > Full Story…

The Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America Magazine have named Notre Dame Law School Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell to their Legal 100, a list of the leading Irish American lawyers in the United States. Nominations for the Legal 100 are submitted by colleagues, institutions, and family members.

Sean O’Brien, assistant director of the Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Civil and Human Rights and concurrent assistant law professor, will speak at John Marshall Law School in Chicago as part of a panel discussion titled “The International and The United States Response to the Crisis in Darfur.”

Notre Dame Law School’s Journal of Legislation presents “Tilted Scales: Pursuing Justice Amidst Unjust Legislation” on Thursday, April 17 from 1:45 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Law School Courtroom. The symposium features: Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., former president of Notre Dame and charter member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Thulani Mabaso, former prisoner in apartheid South Africa; Bridgette Carr, associate clinical professor of law at Notre Dame; and Paolo Carozza, associate professor of law at Notre Dame and chairman of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.…

The J.L. Weigand, Jr. Notre Dame Legal Education Trust awarded three full scholarships to students attending Notre Dame Law School during the 2008-09 academic year. In addition to covering 100 percent of tuition, fees and books, students receive a generous room and board allowance. The scholarship is available to students who have lived in Kansas for at least ten years. The Trust also assists scholarship recipients with career placement in Kansas during and after their graduation from law school.

Jimmy Gurulé, an internationally known expert in the field of international criminal law—specifically terrorism, terrorist financing, and anti-money laundering—will speak at the World Conference on Combating Terrorist Financing sponsored by Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Notre Dame Law School professor Carter Snead joins five other law faculty from Harvard, UCLA and Wisconsin at the University of Alabama for an April 11 symposium titled “Legal Doubt, Scientific Certainty: What Scientific Knowledge Does For and To the Law.” Snead’s talk is called “Law, Science, and Incommensurability.”

This summer, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, Joseph Thomas, Head of Technical Services, will receive the Renee Chapman Award. Presented by the Technical Services Special Interest Section, the Renee Chapman Award is one of the most prestigious awards given out by any unit within the American Association of Law Libraries…

Ambassador, Richard S. Williamson, appointed in January 2008 as special envoy to Sudan by President George W. Bush., will deliver remarks related to his present work as well as his career in both private practice and public service.

Notre Dame Law School professor Rick Garnett is one of two keynote speakers at an upcoming event called “Conversions and Conflict: An Interreligious Discussion of Evangelization.” The discussion will be held at the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minn.

Dr. David Dalin, an ordained rabbi and widely published scholar of American Jewish history and Christian-Jewish relations, will speak at Notre Dame on Thursday, April 3. The talk, which is co-sponsored through the Natural Law Institute at Notre Dame Law School, is entitled “John Paul II and the Jews,” and begins at 7:30 p.m. in room 138 of DeBartolo Hall.

In June of next year, I will complete my tenth year as dean. When I was a relatively new dean, a wonderful alumnus and generous supporter offered me what I have come to appreciate as the best analogy for the responsibilities of a dean in leading an academic institution – this is, the role of a fiduciary. It is with a great sense of pride in what our Law School has achieved over many, many years that I today shared with the Law School community my plans to complete my tenure as dean in June 2009.

Survivors from the war-torn nations of Rwanda and Darfur, a Holocaust survivor, journalists, and others will converge at Notre Dame on Sunday and Monday, April 6-7 for the conference “Witnessing Genocide: Truth, Reconciliation, and the Media.” The event is co-sponsored by Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Civil and Human Rights, and will be held in McKenna Hall on campus.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) voted unanimously to elect University of Notre Dame Associate Professor of Law Paolo Carozza as its chairman for 2008-2009. The election was held on March 3 at the start of the Commission’s 131st regular period of sessions. Carozza—who served as first vice-chairman of…